Day 237

Apart from traffic, that was a really enjoyable ride.  Sunny, but not too hot.  The Vancouver marathon disrupted traffic all over the city this morning.  I'm not complaining, I like the marathon and would like to do it again sometime, but my usual route out of the city was closed.  On the bright side, it gave me a chance to check out some of the new bike lanes that cross the downtown core, and I think they're great.  Then, on the way home, I hit some serious traffic in West Van, and it continued from there, through the park, and all the way back to Kits.  The highlight of this was an old couple that came roaring up behind me in Stanley Park, laying on the horn, and when they passed the woman in the passenger seat gave me the finger!  Not exaggerating, she was at least 70!  There were two lanes at the time, and no other cars around.  All four of us on bikes riding down the hill in the right hand lane were a little put out by this.  So it was kind of funny when traffic came to a halt about 500m later... let's just say my knocking on the passenger window only provoked a tirade of more obscenities from this elderly woman.  I wasn't sure whether I was upset or impressed.

As for the ride, things went pretty much according to plan.  I've been getting stronger since my last power test and needed to calibrate my training zones, so I planned to conserve as much as possible on the ride to the Cypress Mtn. as possible, then go hard for the first 30min.  That all went as well as it could have, but by the top I realized I've got a lot of work to do before I take on the Alps and the Pyrenees in 2 months.  I ended up adjusting my threshold power from 225 to 244W.  The whole ride ended up being 62.96km in 2:52:21 for an avg speed of 22.1km/h and avg power of 157W (187W normalized).

I took a couple of photos with my phone, which more than anything made me want to get a camera for my trip (and now).  The first is looking out over the ocean from about 3000ft, and the second is looking toward Vancouver from about 1400ft.  I've never pulled over at that lookout at 1400 before, but it clouded over when I started my descent and I thought I'd might as well pull over to warm up a bit since the sun had just come back... something in the back of my mind about wanting to have feeling in my fingers to operate the brakes.